it concedes the very point to be proved.

As for the second, it is a cognitive judgment that is not in dispute, like the rational judgments formed in our minds. In beginningless eternity, it is valid to judge impossible things impossible, just as it is valid to judge possible things possible.

It may then be said: Motion in beginningless eternity is either impossible or possible, using “possibility” in the general sense that includes what is necessary. If it is impossible, that claim is false, as explained above. If it is possible, the argument for its impossibility is invalid. Thus, the arguments purporting to establish the impossibility of motion in beginningless eternity are invalid.

Abū al-Hasan al-Āmidī did not accept this answer given by al-Rāzī, but offered another answer, saying:

“The answer is that the intrinsic impossibility of motion having beginningless existence does not entail the impossibility of its having an existence that is not beginningless. Thus, what is impossible—namely, beginningless existence—does not cease to be impossible, while what is possible was never impossible.”

I say: Someone might object: This entails a thing changing from intrinsic impossibility to intrinsic possibility, without any new cause arising to necessitate that change, in a manner that admits of no definite determination either in reality or in reason. For intrinsic possibility is established self-evidently and by agreement. Whatever time is posited at which possibility obtains, it also obtains before that time, without any limit. Possibility therefore has no definite beginning.

To clarify this, it may be said: the feasibility of motion, the possibility of motion, or the admissibility of